xynix:abb3w: This About That: Good for Pat Robertson, but WTF is "revealed science"? Is there also "secret science"?

Well, it may be he's trying to indicate that there are still answers out there that science hasn't come up with or hasn't yet validated. But it is a very interesting word choice, given how "revealed knowledge" from God is usually religiously considered privileged from further question.

Quite simply put: Revelation of knowledge is only derived from those given from God to humans.

In Christianity this might be called "revealed theology" and in science it would be considered "revealed science."

In this case Pat is indicating that God has revealed to us that the world is much older than 6000 years old and we need to pay attention to that. Not paying attention to things that God reveals to us goes directly against what we're supposed to be doing, which is following the will of God. In this case it shows that the Bible is a living manual of life with God and not a static doctrine which should be universally followed.

Modern Christians do not follow anything in the Old Testament. Mentioning stuff like Leviticus is cute for Atheists to do but it means nothing to a modern Christian. God revealed Christ to us and that is now our doctrine and it's a mistake to lean back on the Old Testament - leave that to the Muslims and the Jews.

I can sum it up much more easily: If God exists and created it all intentionally, God probably intended for you to have a brain. That probably means you should go ahead and use it every now and then.

abb3w:xynix: Mentioning stuff like Leviticus is cute for Atheists to do but it means nothing to a modern Christian.

Empirical data suggests that the question of whether the Bible is indeed the Word Of God, and the hypocrisy of nominally religious people -- which would appear to potentially include how they selectively emphasize some passages and ignore others -- do indeed serve as potentially significant triggers of religious doubt. So do questions about tolerance of homosexuality and the role of women -- both covered in Leviticus.

Contrariwise, while such triggers appear mainly a necessary step, they are nowhere near a sufficient one. Attitudes on authority seem to play a large role, as does the decision between whether to seek out competing ideas or simply look for arguments confirming one's preexisting beliefs.

Genesis and Leviticus were both large parts of the reason I began to doubt my faith, around the age of about 8. When I asked my parents questions and they gave me contradictory or nonsense answers, it made me doubt they knew what they were talking about. Same thing when I asked our priest or my father's pastor. I remember asking my mom, "Why am I not allowed to watch these shows when I can read all of these horrible things?" Became clear she didn't know a single word of the Bible to start. So, in short, I agree with you.

To be fair, while I am an atheist, a very good priest has now answered those very same questions in a way that likely would have kept me in the fold if I hadn't spent so many years examining all of my beliefs, which boiled down to, paraphrasing it, "Look, it's hard to get people to actually read the Bible, much less understand it isn't all literal. Everything you're asking is correct -- some of it makes no sense, and some of it is for another time. But there's no way to get people interested enough to learn what they need to know, so some of what people are taught is just lazy thinking."

/really smart dude and a good hearted guy, who treats me like a human even though I share none of his beliefs, which is more than can be said for a lot of people out there in the religious argument land

eraser8:Marine1: Problem is, everything means what we want it to mean. We're humans.

I'll agree to that. So, maybe we should stop pretending there's anything divine in the Bible. Or, at least, we should stop pretending the Bible is any more divine than anything written by Wittgenstein or Proust.

All are the products of human imagination, so far as we can tell. And, none -- again, so far as we can tell -- was inspired by any supernatural agent.

It's divine to me, in ways that make sense to me.

I mean, I'm pro-choice (lawfully, pro-life philosophically), pro-gay marriage, pro-legalization, and for teaching evolution in classrooms. I'm dating a Jew and know there's somewhere between a 0 and .00000000000000000000001% chance she'd ever convert; same goes for me. If people can be like that and be religious... why not let them be?

And another is to make the point that Robertson is making - when your kids grow up and leave the bubble of your church and family, and find out that they've been fed a lot of BS about evo, they will question all the other stuff you've force-fed them.

And the fundies are open to this argument, because all their churches lose significant numbers of kids when they reach their 20's, and they have no idea how to staunch those losses.

He's right about Bishop Usher not being inspired from a religious base. He was using the Bible as a history text. At the time no one knew how to even guess the age of the earth so Usher's method made as much sense as any other guess. Usher work was rather good, such as it was. Had he been born in a later time Usher would probably have embraced modern methods to ascertain the age of the world. Stephen Jay Gould had a good essay about Usher in one of his books. Gould actually admired Usher's ingenuity. .

FitzShivering:To be fair, while I am an atheist, a very good priest has now answered those very same questions in a way that likely would have kept me in the fold if I hadn't spent so many years examining all of my beliefs

Ayep. There are some smart people, who have actually come up with chains of reasoning able to help keep the belief supported and doubt at bay. However....

There's an aphorism in computer science, by Brian Kernighan: "Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?" Obviously, the problem becomes even worse when you're trying to debug code written by someone more clever than you are. Less obviously, there's some underlying basis to the observation in mathematical proof theory (although the factor of two is sometimes horribly conservative), which in turn applies to reasoning in general.

So, many of the religious "attitude bolstering" chains were developed by the sharpest thinkers of the day -- which suggests, some of the flaws/bugs may be very hard for more ordinary people to see.

Of course, this observation actually makes for a pretty clever piece of atheist attitude bolstering itself....

meat0918:It still boggles my mind that we have all this accumulated data that the earth is way, WAY older than 6,000 years old, and that we have so many, many, many, MANY fossils, and DNA evidence, and all these facts that keep piling up, and it makes some people so uncomfortable that they go "No, I'll choose to believe this other thing, in spite of all the evidence it is incorrect, because it makes me feel good."

Except it doesnt usually. Sure some small percentage of religious people are truly happy, probably a couple of Buddhists or something, but for so many religion makes them anxious and guilty and judgmental and hate filled. It seems like most humans want to be miserable to some extent for some crazy reason.

//Hint: your effort to define Christianity by not defining it at all using the "i'll know it when I see it" excuse doesn't make you rational, in fact quite the opposite. Plus it makes you an intellectual coward.

I'll agree to that. So, maybe we should stop pretending there's anything divine in the Bible. Or, at least, we should stop pretending the Bible is any more divine than anything written by Wittgenstein or Proust.

All are the products of human imagination, so far as we can tell. And, none -- again, so far as we can tell -- was inspired by any supernatural agent.

It's divine to me, in ways that make sense to me.

I mean, I'm pro-choice (lawfully, pro-life philosophically), pro-gay marriage, pro-legalization, and for teaching evolution in classrooms. I'm dating a Jew and know there's somewhere between a 0 and .00000000000000000000001% chance she'd ever convert; same goes for me. If people can be like that and be religious... why not let them be?

I hope you weren't under the impression I was trying to change your beliefs. That doesn't interest me.

As long as you leave me to live my life as I see fit, I have no objection to anything you believe or disbelieve.

I was only interested in discussion...and, explaining how I view things. If you don't view the world the same way, that's really none of my business.

From a historical outlook it's interesting and puts some things into perspective from a Christian standpoint. However it's outdated. The "revealed" knowledge of the New Testament confirms this and it's excluded as we're gentiles and not Jews. Fundies just blithely choose to ignore this fact or have no knowledge of this fact which means they have little knowledge of their own religion. They choose to use outdated arguments for their own personal distaste/hatred/whatever.

FitzShivering:/really smart dude and a good hearted guy, who treats me like a human even though I share none of his beliefs, which is more than can be said for a lot of people out there in the religious argument land

The church I go to follows this doctrine. I have a magnet on my car that says "Love God, Love People" and it's the slogan if you will of our church. Gay people, Muslims, Atheists, etc are all our people and we're to love them as such. None of Christs teachings were exclusive but mostly inclusive which leaves those of us that are Christians with the "wiggle room" to accept and include people into our faith regardless of lifestyle. I realize I'm one of the few Christians who comment on this site and that's fine with me because the majority of your opinions are of value to me regardless of whatever religions background or affiliation you have.

The one thing that many "Christians" fail to realize among various political topics is that Christ was very clear that the government perform only government acts. So even if Christ were to be against Gay marriage it's not relevant at the government level. Same with abortion which I'm strongly opposed to but feel should be legal for those who aren't of my faith. In the church there are mechanisms in place to help girls/women who might want to have an abortion. There are many children adopted because churches have stepped in and helped those girls or women make a different choice knowing they had the full support of thousands of other Christians. That's where it should stay - at the church level.

From a historical outlook it's interesting and puts some things into perspective from a Christian standpoint. However it's outdated. The "revealed" knowledge of the New Testament confirms this and it's excluded as we're gentiles and not Jews. Fundies just blithely choose to ignore this fact or have no knowledge of this fact which means they have little knowledge of their own religion. They choose to use outdated arguments for their own personal distaste/hatred/whatever.

FitzShivering: /really smart dude and a good hearted guy, who treats me like a human even though I share none of his beliefs, which is more than can be said for a lot of people out there in the religious argument land

The church I go to follows this doctrine. I have a magnet on my car that says "Love God, Love People" and it's the slogan if you will of our church. Gay people, Muslims, Atheists, etc are all our people and we're to love them as such. None of Christs teachings were exclusive but mostly inclusive which leaves those of us that are Christians with the "wiggle room" to accept and include people into our faith regardless of lifestyle. I realize I'm one of the few Christians who comment on this site and that's fine with me because the majority of your opinions are of value to me regardless of whatever religions background or affiliation you have.

The one thing that many "Christians" fail to realize among various political topics is that Christ was very clear that the government perform only government acts. So even if Christ were to be against Gay marriage it's not relevant at the government level. Same with abortion which I'm strongly opposed to but feel should be legal for those who aren't of my faith. In the church there are mechanisms in place to help girls/women who might want to have an abortion. There are many children adopted because churches have stepped in and helped those girl ...

The fabled "rational christian" appears. There are so few anymore. They're like unicorns. Most of the ones you hear from are Bible-thumping douchenozzles with too little to say and too much time to say it, coupled with a sprinkling of hate.

eraser8:Son of Thunder: If only there were people who dedicated their careers to questions like this, who earned PhDs in fields like theology and biblical studies

Those are basically the sciences of explaining why the Bible doesn't really mean what it really says...which speaks to my point: when the Bible can mean whatever anyone wants it to mean, it doesn't mean anything at all.

No, precisely the opposite. They are about understanding what the bible actually says. Dismissing entire fields of scholarly inquiry because they produce answers that are too complex to explain to your average seventh-grader is exactly the kind of self-justifying anti-intellectualism that young earth creationists engage in.

//Hint: your effort to define Christianity by not defining it at all using the "i'll know it when I see it" excuse doesn't make you rational, in fact quite the opposite. Plus it makes you an intellectual coward.

He's a point in Islam. He's not a focal point.

As for the second sentence... it would be nice, wouldn't it?

It's not intellectual cowardice if it just is. You either get it or you don't. Same goes for anything else in life.

Son of Thunder:eraser8: Son of Thunder: If only there were people who dedicated their careers to questions like this, who earned PhDs in fields like theology and biblical studies

Those are basically the sciences of explaining why the Bible doesn't really mean what it really says...which speaks to my point: when the Bible can mean whatever anyone wants it to mean, it doesn't mean anything at all.

No, precisely the opposite. They are about understanding what the bible actually says. Dismissing entire fields of scholarly inquiry because they produce answers that are too complex to explain to your average seventh-grader is exactly the kind of self-justifying anti-intellectualism that young earth creationists engage in.

That's absolute nonsense. What the Bible actually says is written down. It's available to anyone who's interested. The theologian has taken it upon himself to tell us what the Bible MEANS. And, they can only maintain a veneer of academic respectability if there is some gap between the words of the Bible and the meaning those words are meant to convey.

PZ Myers, an actual academic, pretty much echos my thoughts on the subject:

People keep telling me that I have to read up more on real theology, you know, the stuff where smart old white guys sit around in seminaries and invent rationalizations for whatever the hell they want to believe. Unfortunately, I don't see any difference in principle (but hopefully, in outcome) between what, for instance, elders of the Mormon church or Catholic bishops say, than the ideas of Peter Lucas Moses*, who has his own special interpretation of God's holy word.

Theology, as one philosopher demonstrated by getting nonsensical theology papers accepted by major theological conferences, can't really be distinguished from wishful thinking at best and gibberish at worst.

It is the job of the theologian, as I wrote earlier, to explain why the Bible doesn't really mean what the Bible really says. You've yet to offer any reason to doubt assessment.

* [Peter Lucas Moses is] a religious leader in North Carolina [who] shot to death his four-year old step son because he thought the boy, Jadon Higganbothan, might be gay. The man, Peter Lucas Moses, 27, also shot to death a 28-year old woman, [and] may face the death penalty.

abb3w:There's an aphorism in computer science, by Brian Kernighan: "Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?" Obviously, the problem becomes even worse when you're trying to debug code written by someone more clever than you are. Less obviously, there's some underlying basis to the observation in mathematical proof theory (although the factor of two is sometimes horribly conservative), which in turn applies to reasoning in general.

In my experience, for every time you double the length of code, the code becomes four times as hard to debug, which I think makes this a geometric relationship.

eraser8:If a "day" in Genesis isn't a literal day, then the Bible is not literally true. In that case, "day" becomes either poetry or metaphor. And, we're still left wondering what parts of the Bible are literal and which shouldn't be taken so seriously.

Define literal day.Meanwhile, take the 10 Commandments serious and the Testimony of Jesus Christ.Odd bits in Leviticus and Acts by Paul, not so much.

Arkanaut:abb3w: There's an aphorism in computer science, by Brian Kernighan: "Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?" Obviously, the problem becomes even worse when you're trying to debug code written by someone more clever than you are. Less obviously, there's some underlying basis to the observation in mathematical proof theory (although the factor of two is sometimes horribly conservative), which in turn applies to reasoning in general.

In my experience, for every time you double the length of code, the code becomes four times as hard to debug, which I think makes this a geometric relationship.

//my $0.02

seriously off topic (wow, pat robertson, who'd a thunk it), but this seems pertinent to the coding comments:

"Every program has at least one bug and can be shortened by at least one instruction - from which, by induction, it is evident that every program can be reduced to one instruction that does not work."

eraser8:Then the Bible means whatever you want it to mean. But, any document that means whatever the reader wants it to mean ultimately means nothing.

Can't you say that about anything?

I mean I see your point, there is so much contradictory stuff it is easier to pick what every you want out of it. But most people who have studied it looking for answers are probably going to come up with a system for which parts are right, or have more weight.

If you are reading it with what Jesus saying trumping everything else, it is a pretty good holy book.

eraser8:Son of Thunder: eraser8: Son of Thunder: If only there were people who dedicated their careers to questions like this, who earned PhDs in fields like theology and biblical studies

Those are basically the sciences of explaining why the Bible doesn't really mean what it really says...which speaks to my point: when the Bible can mean whatever anyone wants it to mean, it doesn't mean anything at all.

No, precisely the opposite. They are about understanding what the bible actually says. Dismissing entire fields of scholarly inquiry because they produce answers that are too complex to explain to your average seventh-grader is exactly the kind of self-justifying anti-intellectualism that young earth creationists engage in.

That's absolute nonsense. What the Bible actually says is written down. It's available to anyone who's interested. The theologian has taken it upon himself to tell us what the Bible MEANS. And, they can only maintain a veneer of academic respectability if there is some gap between the words of the Bible and the meaning those words are meant to convey.

PZ Myers, an actual academic, pretty much echos my thoughts on the subject: People keep telling me that I have to read up more on real theology, you know, the stuff where smart old white guys sit around in seminaries and invent rationalizations for whatever the hell they want to believe. Unfortunately, I don't see any difference in principle (but hopefully, in outcome) between what, for instance, elders of the Mormon church or Catholic bishops say, than the ideas of Peter Lucas Moses*, who has his own special interpretation of God's holy word.Theology, as one philosopher demonstrated by getting nonsensical theology papers accepted by major theological conferences, can't really be distinguished from wishful thinking at best and gibberish at worst.

It is the job of the theologian, as I wrote earlier, to explain why the Bible doesn't really mean what the Bible really says. You've yet to offer any reason to doubt assessment.

* [Peter Lucas Moses is] a religious leader in North Carolina [who] shot to death his four-year old step son because he thought the boy, Jadon Higganbothan, might be gay. The man, Peter Lucas Moses, 27, also shot to death a 28-year old woman, [and] may face the death penalty.

It's hardly nonsense to claim that territory exists between an absolute literalism beyond what even the fundamentalists endorse, and an absolute lack of meaning in the text.

Restating your claim using more words is not the same thing as proving your claim. And quoting PZ Myers' take on theology is about as relevant as quoting DL Moody to support a point about biology. (The fact that Myers is "an academic" is no guarantee of his accuracy. After all... I am also an academic).

So I'll ask this: in forming your position on the worthlessness of theology and biblical studies, how much actual theology or biblical studies did you read? And by "theology and biblical studies", I don't mean some crap you pulled from a random website. I don't mean the Sunday School lessons you might have endured at the hands of whatever uneducated hausfrau happened to volunteer at your local church. And I don't mean some "Pastor Pete and His Wacky Pals Explain the Bible in Fifteen Pages" book you pulled from a Religion shelf at Borders. I mean thick books containing big words written by people who have actual training the fields in question.

(Note also that, in that Myers quote, nowhere did he mention ever actually reading the theology. All he did was spin another layer of rationalizations for not reading what he nevertheless feels himself competent to judge)

There's nothing wrong with theology as a factual study of religion, but it always devolves into some old white guy proclaiming some mumbo jumbo then telling everyone that they're too dumb too understand it. Sorry, but the reason nobody understands it is because your tortured reasoning to try and explain a myth just doesn't hold up.

Son of Thunder:It's hardly nonsense to claim that territory exists between an absolute literalism beyond what even the fundamentalists endorse, and an absolute lack of meaning in the text.

In most disciplines, I would agree. And, when theology is irreligious, it applies there, as well: studying the Bible as mere literature, studying the traditions of the faith without falling for it, that kind of thing. But, the kind of theology that comes out of the Roman Church's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, that sees the central characters in the Bible story as more than fiction -- or, at the very least, fictionalized -- seems silly.

Son of Thunder:And quoting PZ Myers' take on theology is about as relevant as quoting DL Moody to support a point about biology. (The fact that Myers is "an academic" is no guarantee of his accuracy.

That was just a bit of snark. I referred to PZ Myers as a "real academic" to contrast his field, biology -- a real academic subject -- with theology.

Son of Thunder:So I'll ask this: in forming your position on the worthlessness of theology and biblical studies, how much actual theology or biblical studies did you read?

Nothing modern. Mostly things like Aquinas and Boethius and, in the Muslim (Sufism) tradition, Farid ud-Din Attar. But, would you honestly need to read books on Smurfist theology to realize that Papa Smurf was an invention? Would you need an MDiv or DD to know that Gargamel is not God's enemy?

Son of Thunder:It's hardly nonsense to claim that territory exists between an absolute literalism beyond what even the fundamentalists endorse, and an absolute lack of meaning in the text.

Even most atheists don't go as far as "absolute lack of meaning"; it's more common to consider it of roughly the order with Homeric mythology or Aesop's Fables. The question that seems more interesting is on what basis you decide where it falls on the spectrum -- which is somewhat about the philosophical underpinnings of biblical studies.